


the games we used to play(and still do)

by shairiru



Series: For MidoAka Month 2015 [2]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Childhood, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 07:25:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4092244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shairiru/pseuds/shairiru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Children love to play games.</p>
<p>For MidoAka Month. 2: Childhood/Vacation</p>
            </blockquote>





	the games we used to play(and still do)

Three games they used to play:

 

1\. seesaw

 

The playground is a new place to Akashi Seijuurou. Being the heir to their prestigious company, he’s being trained in many ways at such a young age. To go out and play in a common place such as a children’s playground is something unacceptable to his father, but his mother thinks it would be best for his welfare that he go out and mingle with children of his age in a place like it. There were a lot of talks and bargaining, but at the end, he was allowed to go once a week together with a “small company”. 

 

Unnecessary, is what Seijuurou thinks. But as a child of age six, he doesn’t have a say with this. Instead, he silently accepts, not showing any hint that he’s actually ecstatic to have been let out of the house for once just for leisure and not for family reasons.

 

But being flanked by your mother, two nannies and three bodyguards in the playground wasn’t very encouraging to the other children already in there. Most kids laughed, some ignored him. Some mean looking children tries to come near him, but upon seeing his entourage, they back away. It is a pretty humiliating moment for him. He is just a few seconds from turning back when another boy approached him, his arms around a stuffed toy, glasses askew.

 

“Will you join me in the seesaw? No one wants to play with me.”

 

Seijuurou looks at him, and his trained young eyes did not miss the dust that covered the kid’s shorts and the slight scratches on his exposed legs. He’s only heard of bullying, but he didn’t know it actually happens. He turns to look at his mother who was smiling, her eyes telling him to go on. He looks back at the boy.

 

“Let’s go,” he smiles.

 

The boy’s eyes widens, and a smile comes up next.

 

“Hurry!” his previously down voice brims with life, and Seijuurou knows he has found a friend.

 

“Was it fun?” his mother asks when the time came that he and the boy, his name is Shintarou and just the same age as him, had to part.

 

“Very, mother,” and there’s this satisfied smile on his face his mother has never seen him make before.

 

2\. house

 

One day that Seijuurou comes back excitedly to play with his new friend, he finds him sprawled on the ground with the older kids surrounding him. Without much thinking, he runs fast and puts himself between them and Shintarou, holding his head high as he was taught. He meets the bullies’ eyes unrelentingly.

 

“You’ve seen who I go here with,” he starts, “Make more trouble for Shintarou and there would be for all of you, as well.”

 

The kids have backed away, but their eyes told of a next time. Worried about his friend’s safety, he invites Shintarou to play with him in their house instead.

 

“It  _is_  much safer,” his mother tells Shintarou on the way, “And more convenient for his father. He didn’t want him far from home at the first place.”

 

Seijuurou does not miss when Shintarou’s expression changes as they enter the Akashi estate. His green eyes widens behind his glasses and his back straightens to get the extra view outside. Seijuurou then leans against the car window, his face pressed onto the glass. Shintarou follows his lead after a few seconds, proving Seijuurou’s hunch that the other boy is holding himself back. Their place is a wonderful sight, after all.

 

His mother leads them to his room and tells them to wait for the snacks. With an encouraging smile, she leaves the children on their own.

 

“Do you have toys?” Shintarou asks, his eyes wandering around the spacious room.

 

“I have a shogi board. A chess board, too,” he answers.

 

“Those are not children’s toys,” he pouts, “Don’t you have toy cars, airplanes, guns, dinosaurs, stuffed toys?”

 

“None, I’m afraid.”

 

Shintarou looks at the ceiling thoughtfully.

 

“Maybe, we can play house instead.”

 

“House?”

 

“It’s this thing my parents play with me. We build a makeshift house in my bedroom using blankets, then we pretend we live in that house and we do our family things there. My mom pretends to cook breakfast, my dad and I pretend that we will eat that breakfast. At night, we huddle together and my mom will read a bedtime story while my dad holds a flashlight above us. Do you get what I mean?”

 

Seijuurou does not see the point why one would have to play scenarios like that. But he doesn’t like to show himself ignorant, so he does not reply.

 

“I’ll just show you, then,” Shintarou huffs, “Help me with the blankets.”

 

They spend the next minutes tying his many blankets on the corners of his four-poster bed until they’ve covered all sides. Shintarou isn’t satisfied until another one is put above, seeming to be the roof. The two children admire their handicraft from the bottom of the bed. Shintarou hops in first, opening a loose side, the door, and invites Seijuurou inside.

 

“This is our house,” he says with a smile.

 

Seijuurou follows him inside and sees the empty space that is his bed.

 

“Our house could use some decoration, don’t you think?”

 

“But you don’t have stuffed toys.”

 

“You should bring some next time, then. I’m sure you have tons.”

 

“Yeah! You should meet Kerosuke, too! Maybe we can make him the guard frog of this house.”

 

Seijuurou’s mother arrives and sees the contraption they have built. She sees the two children inside the blankets, lying side by side and joyfully conversing with each other. They don’t realize when it’s time for Shintarou to go home, and they bid each other farewell.

 

.

 

“Say, what am I supposed to do if I’m playing as the mother?”

 

They are just finishing decorating their house and are deciding on situations to play. They have agreed to pretend to be a family, with Midorima’s rabbit stuffed toys as their children. Kerosuke, the frog toy, sits outside their house and serves as the guard.

 

“You should cook the breakfast! My mom cooks them for us every morning.”

 

“Ah, then I will cook us tofu soup.”

 

“Tofu soup?”

 

“Mom makes them for me every time,” he smiles fondly, “They’re the best.”

 

“How about you?”

 

“I will be going to work since I’m the father of the house. You should take the kids to school,” he pretends as if he’s wearing a suit and preparing his suitcase. Seijuurou closes the distance between them and plants a kiss on his cheek.

 

“Work hard,” he smiles. He sees Shintarou’s cheek turn into a bright red and he wonders if he’s done something wrong. “It’s something my mother does to my father before he goes to work. Is it not right?”

 

“N-n-no,” he stammers, his hands clumsily fumbling for his eyeglasses, “I was just surprised.” He clears his throat and kisses Seijuurou’s forehead, “Take care.”

 

Seijuurou’s hands come up to the spot where Shintarou kissed it and somehow he felt nervous all of a sudden. But he is happy, nonetheless, and that’s what counted.

 

3\. shogi

 

“It’s really easy,” a nine year-old Seijuurou concludes to a blank-staring Shintarou. He had just finished explaining the basic rules of shogi in hopes of recruiting him into his game. It’s not fun to play by oneself, after all.

 

“It’s not  _easy,_ ” the other boy huffs, holding several pieces on his hand, “It’s all strategy, and too much of a grown-up game for me.”

 

“You really should learn. I got to play against no one.”

 

“You don’t play with your parents?”

 

“Mom doesn’t know how, and my father’s just…always busy. He’s barely around,” he exhales through his nose and bites his lip, “It’s alright if you don’t play this. Surely we can find other games.”

 

Shintarou looks at Seijuurou as he started to gather the pieces from their assigned positions. He’s never noticed it before, but it actually looked like he’s carrying a heavy weight on his shoulders. He had just been hiding this fact in the way he always holds himself so high. Shintarou knew nothing about the life of being an adult, but surely, children like them aren’t supposed to feel like that?

 

He reaches out and grabs Seijuurou’s wrist, much to the other boy’s surprise.

 

“Let’s play one game,” he tells him, “Experience is the best teacher, they say.”

 

Seijuurou grins, and he returns the pieces to their places.

 

.

 

“One more,” Shintarou says after their first game. Seijuurou managed to beat him in twenty-one moves, and he had told him he was letting him easy, “I will beat you next time.”

 

“Maybe,” Seijuurou shrugs with a small smile, “I can’t wait.”

 

Shintarou didn’t realize that it is just the first of his many defeats. But he learns to love shogi anyway, and most of it is because of Seijuurou.

 

“Thank you,” Seijuurou tells him when he is about to go home.

 

“For what?”

 

“Playing with me. Especially shogi. I really thought you wouldn’t, but you still did. It’s the first time someone actually played it with me, you know. I never thought shogi could be this fun.”

 

“Of course I will always play with you. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

 

“Yeah,” Seijuurou nods happily.

 

“And we’ll always be, and we will play many many many more games, alright?”

 

“It’s a promise,” Seijuurou holds up his pinkie finger, to which Shintarou stares at it quizically, “Mom told me that if you shake your pinkie with others, then you seal the deal.”

 

“It’s a deal then,” Shintarou hooks his pinkie with his and shakes it once, “For more games.”

 

“And to being friends.”

 

.

 

.

 

.

 

and one that they still do: pretend.

 

Shintarou holds his breath as Seijuurou passes by him on the hallway, flanked by his new friends from the basketball team. Seijuurou had joined it over a year ago, knowing all too well it was a world Shintarou cannot ever fit into.

 

Being the top students in their grade, they cannot escape being classmates. However, they have made sure to sit on opposite sides of the classroom. Seijuurou was able to make a lot of acquaintances in a short time, while Shintarou retreated into his shell, watching from afar. Shintarou had joined the music club and is its pianist. Seijuurou is now the basketball team’s captain. No one knows of their history, and they act as if they have none.

 

He can’t remember how they started to fall apart. What he does recall is Seijuurou’s mother being ill, Seijuurou drawing away from him slowly, their times together lessening considerably. He had wanted to talk about it to him, but Shintarou never had the courage. He had wanted badly to be there to support Seijuurou during his times of distress, but their situation made him lose his motivation. Without him realizing it, he and Seijuurou had not spoken for months since his mother’s death. He concluded that Seijuurou must have grown tired of his company.

 

He looks behind him and follows the image of Seijuurou’s back getting smaller and smaller until it is no more. The space between them seems so distant, their hearts far away from each other.

 

He raises his pinkie finger up in the air and remembers their promise to each other years ago.

 

_We will play many many many more games, alright?_

 

This certain game they play right now doesn’t look like it will have any winner soon.

 

.

 

.

 

.

 

(Seijuurou steels himself as he passes by Shintarou in the hallway. He is aware of the game that they still play, and he doesn’t plan to lose that easily.

 

Even if he wanted to, just so he can have his dearest friend back.)


End file.
